Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Where Mentioning the Words “Chest” and “Pain” Gets You

I’ve probably been pretty stupid, but since about Saturday I’ve been feeling some pressure in my chest. Not necessarily a “pain” but it sort of has felt like someone was pressing down on my sternum. I’m afraid of doctors so I was just sort of hoping it would go away with time. This morning it flared up again. I was driving to lunch with my superintendant, MSgt Blakely, when I just sort of mentioned that I’d been feeling some pressure in my chest. This alarmed her and she tried to get me to come with her to make an appointment at the hospital to get it checked out. Of course, I probably should have known better. The minute you tell an appointment desk that you’re experiencing any kind of discomfort in your chest they won’t allow you to make an appointment a couple days out. Instead they insisted I get checked into the Urgent Care Clinic.

Anyone who knows me fairly well knows that I don’t do well with medical things. I need to be driven just to get shots, and I've passed out behind the wheel following a blood draw. So being admitted to urgent care for “tests” was basically the culmination of every reason I hadn’t gone yet to the hospital. I really didn’t feel like it was a heart problem, but they still ran numerous EKGs and heart x-rays. They took four vials of blood from me and hooked me up to my first IV. It was a miserable, miserable experience. I’ve been hooked up to machines and heart monitors since about 11:30 today and I only got home a little while ago. At one point they told me there was an “abnormality” in my bloodwork, which scared me, but a retest took care of that.

The good news is that it is not a heart issue whatsoever. I suspected that, but they still had to do all their tests and bloodwork to make sure. I got a little better after they hooked me up to some sort of breathing exercise. Best they can tell is that I have some sort of constriction in my lung passages. I have an inhaler and some medicine to take and hopefully that fixes it. Forget the chest pain, what put me down for the count was four vials of blood and countless tests as I lay half-uniformed in the urgent care center for more than half of the day.

Holly was a doll. She came out after the first sergeant gave her a call. All in all four people came by to say hello, which is always nice. In the end I feel fine and I’m relieved I don’t have any heart problems. And hopefully the lung issue will dissipate in the coming days. For now I’m going to enjoy a relaxing evening on the couch and have some junk food, because I am totally, totally exhausted.